IMSLP Forums

When playing poorer scans I find the biggest problem is when ledger lines drop out, especially when at the top and bottom of the staff. When an accidental is just a smudge or a 16th hard to distinguish from a 32nd one can usually guess the correct value from context. But missing ledger lines just cripple my ability to sight read the music.

Given that these lines are mathematically spaced and identical on every page in spacing, and are all parallel one would think that it should not be hard to redraw them back onto poor quality scans where they are missing.

Is there any software that might help with this? An automated solution that detected the staff location and redrew the lines( with subpixel allignment and antialiasing ) would be ideal.

I've never heard of any type of software or scripted solution which addresses this. It would be incredibly difficult to implement, I believe. Your best solution is to either dump out the images and add in, via some image editor, missing/obscured ledger lines, or to actually print the page(s), pencil them in, and re-scan them. Probably the BEST solution, especially for future viewers, would be to acquire a copy of the score in good or better condition and create new scans from it.